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KALAMAZOO, MI – On the case now for five days, the private investigator hired last week by Dr. Teleka Patrick’s family said he believes the missing Kalamazoo doctor is alive.

“Absolutely,” Jim Carlin, who heads Justinian Investigative Services in Battle Creek, said Tuesday when asked if he thought Patrick, 30, was still alive, more than a month after she was last seen in downtown Kalamazoo.

“… Call it cop intuition … But I do believe she is alive.”

Carlin was hired by Patrick’s parents on Thursday, the same day they terminated the services of Kalamazoo private investigator Carl H. Clatterbuck III.

Carlin, who also has investigated the 2004 disappearance of Mary Lands, of Marshall, inherited a case that, up to this point, has been filled with mystery and more questions than answers.

Despite that, Carlin said he is "positive" that Patrick will be found.

His first five days on the case have been active, including tracking down information on a tip on Monday of a possible sighting of Patrick outside a 7-Eleven convenience store in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Carlin said he and police were able to later confirm that the woman sighted in Colorado was not Patrick.

Meanwhile, Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Pali Matyas said Tuesday that his agency plans to “in the next week and a half or two … to put out something more definitive as to what our investigation has disclosed.”

One thing Matyas said police may address when they release more information later this month is whether investigators believe Patrick is alive.

“I would say the investigation is starting to wrap up,” Matyas said. “We’re still dissecting lot of stuff.”

Patrick, who was in her first year of a four-year residency in psychiatry at the Western Michigan University School of Medicine, disappeared on the night of Dec. 5 after she tried unsuccessfully to book a room at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites.

A co-worker gave Patrick a ride to the hotel after she finished a shift at Borgess Medical Center that night and Patrick borrowed $100 from a friend that she tried to use to check in at the Radisson.

Just before 8 p.m. that night, a hotel courtesy shuttle driver then gave Patrick a ride back to her car – a gold 1997 Lexus ES300 – in the Borgess parking lot.

Just after 10 p.m. that night, Indiana State Police responded after receiving a report that Patrick’s car had gone off westbound I-94 into a ditch near Portage, Ind. Police arrived about 15 minutes later and found the car but no trace of Patrick.

Inside the car, police found Patrick’s ID, credit cards and wallet. Her cellphone and purse were found Dec. 6, the day she was reported missing after she failed to show up for work.

Carlin said Tuesday that he and police believe Patrick went to Indiana on Dec. 5 “of her own free will” and Kalamazoo County sheriff’s investigators have told him and Patrick’s family they believe “some type of emotional distress” led to her leaving Kalamazoo.

“Where she is from there, we don’t know,” Carlin said.

One possibility that Carlin said he is investigating is whether Patrick, after getting out of her car in Indiana, later checked herself into a hospital where she asked that her identity be kept a secret. Such a request, Carlin said, would have to be honored by the facility given federal privacy laws.

Carlin also said Tuesday that he is aware of numerous tweets that surfaced this week, apparently from Patrick prior to her disappearance, in which she talks to an apparent love interest and, among other things, her frustration with the relationship and hearing demonic voices.

Carlin said, however, that while he is aware of the Tweets, he has not had an opportunity to examine them at length and has not confirmed that the tweets were from Patrick.

“Is that her?” Carlin said. “The family has not idea. It may be, it may not be and all (the family is) focusing on now is how can we figure out what happened to her on Dec. 5 and how can we bring her home.”

What else has baffled Carlin, he said, is that if Patrick was experiencing some type of emotional distress in the days leading up to her disappearance, people who worked with Patrick at Borgess or even people at a local gym where Patrick worked out regularly, apparently saw no signs that something was awry with her.

“I know behavior and there are always these signs,” Carlin said. “… It’s almost as if there was another identity when she got home and opened up a laptop if in fact all of these things or some of these things are true.

“How come no one else knew about it?”

Rex Hall Jr. is a public safety reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. You can reach him at rhall2@mlive.com. Follow him on Twitter.